"HE CALLED HER TO HIM"

A Very inspiring healing is related in the thirteenth chapter of Luke. It reads: "There was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself. And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. And he laid his hands on her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God." This passage shows clearly the healing office of the Christ, and Christian Science awakens us to the fact that the same healing power of the Christ, exemplifying the true relationship of God and man, is present today for us to demonstrate.

Was it a lack of courtesy, of love, and of compassion on Jesus' part that he did not go to the woman who was bent and infirm, but bade her come to him? No. Jesus realized clearly that infirmity, disease, and all disability were entirely mental products of erring mortal mind. In "Unity of Good" Mary Baker Eddy, our revered Leader, writes (p. 11), "Jesus stooped not to human consciousness, nor to the evidence of the senses." The woman was "bowed together," that is, burdened with the material sense of herself as discordant, diseased, lacking, and had been for eighteen years. "He called her to him"—to the Christ-consciousness, that consciousness which reveals true selfhood as reflecting, or expressing, the everlasting, ever-acting, ever-loving qualities of God.

When the Master said to her, "Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity," he annulled the so-called laws of mortal belief; he removed the heavy, fearful, lying arguments that had bowed her down for eighteen years, and awakened her to some understanding of her true womanhood, her real selfhood as a child of God, upright, pure, and free. Through her inspired writings Mrs. Eddy has brought to light true womanhood and manhood as the reflection of the Father-Mother God. Jesus expressed the womanhood of God by his great love, compassion, and tenderness in healing the sick, in comforting the sorrowing, and in raising the dead. Just to the extent that we are expressing the womanhood of God are we fulfilling the office of womanhood.

"And he laid his hands on her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God." It was not the laying on of material hands but Jesus' realization of the power of God, of the vitalizing activity of Love—the Christ; it was his understanding of man as reflecting the might and strength of true manhood as well as the qualities of true womanhood that made her straight, upright, and free.

Our Leader states (Unity of Good, pp. 11, 12): "Jesus required neither cycles of time nor thought in order to mature fitness for perfection and its possibilities. He said that the kingdom of heaven is here, and is included in Mind; that while ye say, There are yet four months, and then cometh the harvest, I say, Look up, not down, for your fields are already white for the harvest; and gather the harvest by mental, not material processes." He did not require time, or process, or argument to dispel the illusion of infirmity or to behold the perfect man as God made him and sees him. He was not mesmerized by the false picture of man as "bowed together," for he knew this condition to be but mortal thought externalized. He looked up, heavenward, and beheld the real man, possessing by reflection all the attributes of God.

The primary purpose of Christian Science healing is not to make people comfortable in matter, but to awaken them to know and glorify God and to bear witness to His presence and power here and now. In reality man evidences the presence of God, expressing intelligence, power, activity, Life, Love, Soul. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 475) Mrs. Eddy says man is "that which has not a single quality underived from Deity; that which possesses no life, intelligence, nor creative power of his own, but reflects spiritually all that belongs to his Maker." Jesus knew that the "fields are already white for the harvest." He knew that man is ever at the standpoint of perfection and that he is not a mortal endeavoring to become spiritual and immortal.

A Christian Science practitioner was called to heal a child who was at the point of death. She had witnessed a number of healings of infantile paralysis, in one case after three physicians had given the child only a few hours to live. Thus she immediately recognized the claim. The parents were grieved and very fearful, so she asked them to go into another room to study and not for an instant to associate the false picture with the child, but to see him as expressing the qualities of God, of health and perfection.

The practitioner took the little child in her arms. She affirmed the fact of man's eternal at-one-ment with God as His likeness and declared that she would not bow down to any false laws or graven images presented by mortal mind. Then the saying of Jesus (Matt. 19:14), "Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven," filled her consciousness.

As she earnestly pondered this statement, it came to her forcefully that if she had the unwavering faith of a little child, if her thoughts were as pure, as joyous, as loving, and as obedient as those of a child, she would indeed be answering the call of the Christ, "Come unto me." Through childlike purity she would enter the kingdom of heaven. She saw that in God's universe there can be only that which proceeds from God, such as spiritual life. love, perfect action, co-ordination, and harmony, and that there is no outside to infinity, no universe but His universe; thus no place where God is not supreme, almighty, the All-in-all.

She was so imbued with this heavenly inspiration which unfolded to her that she forgot all about the child. In about thirty minutes she felt the little body relax, and looking down saw no evidence of the convulsions of error, but instead a happy, peaceful smile. She protected her treatment by knowing that in truth there had never been a sick child to be healed; only an aggressive suggestion of mortal mind had been replaced with the truth of man's eternal perfection. And she declared that since disease had never touched man or had any place in God's universe, it was nothing; and there could be no return of nothingness. She then called the parents and gave the child to them, and soon he was free and permanently healed.

We cannot become infirm, paralyzed, burdened with fear, or bowed down with painful, distressing beliefs when we refuse to accept them as real and listen for the Christ, which is ever saying, "Come unto me." Heeding the divine message, we shall partake of the feast of unlimited health, wealth, joy, peace, and abundance of good, which is God's provision for all His children.